Philo of Alexandria on the eternity of the world (De aeternitate mundi, 1–19)

Philo remains not only a key figure in the history of the interpretation of the biblical books, but also a crucial witness to the development of Platonism in the first century BCE. It is in this capacity that he appears in the treatise ‘On the Eternity of the World’ translated below, which can be divided into two unequal parts: the introductory part (sec. 1-19), in which Philo speaks for the most part on his own behalf, and the doxographic part (sec. 20–150), which systematically presents the positions of other philosophers, most notably the Peripatetics. After a general introduction, in this paper we turn to the first part of the treatise.